A hand went to her throat. “You—you mean—?”
“He was very old and very weary. He had kept his heart beating, his body functioning, by continuous control for these past forty-odd years.”
“But why did he not renew and regenerate?”
“He did not wish it. We could not expect him to remain here indefinitely after he had grown up.”
“No.” She bit her trembling lip. “No. That is true. We are children and he has other things to do—but—Oh, Ling! Ling! Master Ling!” She buried her head on Howe’s shoulder.
—”Why are you weeping, Little Flower?” Her head jerked up.—”Master Ling!”
—”Can that not be which has been? Is there past or future? Have you learned my lessons so poorly? Am I not now with you, as always?”
She felt in the thought the vibrant timeless merriment, the gusto for living which was the hallmark of the gentle Chinese. With a part of her mind she squeezed Howe’s hand. “Sorry,” she said. “I was wrong.” She relaxed as Ling had taught her, let her consciousness flow in the revery which encompasses time in a single deathless now.
Howe, seeing that she was at peace, turned his attention to the meeting.
He reached out with his mind and gathered them together into the telepathic network of full conference..—”I think that you all know why we meet,” he thought.—”I have served my time; we enter another and more active period when other qualities than mine are needed. I have called you to consider and pass on my selection of a successor.”
Huxley was finding the thought messages curiously difficult to follow. I must be exhausted from the effort, he thought to himself.
But Howe was thinking aloud again.—”So be it; we are agreed.” He looked at Huxley.
“Philip, will you accept the trust?”
“What?!!”
“You are Senior now—by common consent”
“But. . . but—I am not ready.”
“We think so,” answered Howe evenly. “Your talents are needed now. You will grow under responsibility.”
—”Chin up, pal!” It was Coburn, in private message.
—”It’s all right, Phil.” Joan, that time.
For an instant he seemed to hear Ling’s dry chuckle, his calm acceptance.
“I will try!” he answered.
On the last day of camp Joan sat with Mrs. Draper on a terrace of the Home on Shasta, overlooking the valley. She sighed. Mrs. Draper looked up from her knitting and smiled. “Are you sad that the camp is over?”
“Oh, no! I’m glad it is.”
“What is it, then?”
“I was just thinking . . . we go to all this effort and trouble to put on this camp. Then we have to fight to keep it safe. Tomorrow those boys go home—then they must be watched, each one of them, while they grow strong enough to protect themselves against all the evil things there are still in the world. Next year there will be another crop of boys, and then another, and then another. Isn’t there any end to it?”
“Certainly there is an end to it. Don’t you remember, in the ancient records, what became of the elders? When we have done what there is for us to do here, we move on to where there is more to do. The human race was not meant to stay here forever.”
It still seems endless.”
“It does, when you think of it that way, my dear. The way to make it seem short and interesting is to think about what you are going to do next. For example, what are you going to do next?”
“Me?” Joan looked perplexed. Her face cleared, “Why . . . why I’m going to get married!”
“I thought so. ” Mrs. Draper’s needles clicked away.
Chapter Thirteen “—and the Truth Shall Make You Free!”
The globe still swung around the sun. The seasons came and the seasons went. The sun still shone on the mountainsides, the hills were green, and the valleys lush. The river sought the bosom of the sea, then rode the cloud, and found the hills as rain. The cattle cropped in the brown plains, the fox stalked the hare through the brush. The tides answered the sway of the moon, and the gulls picked at the wet sand in the wake of the tide. The earth was fair and the earth was full; it teemed with life, swarmed with life, overflowed with life—a stream in spate.